Malaysian officials investigating Aussie company GeoResonance’s claims it may have found missing Malaysia Airlines MH370

IT HAS reportedly been sighted in the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Thailand and the Indian Ocean - and even as far afield as the Maldives - but seven weeks after Flight MH370 went missing, searchers still have no firm clue where the Malaysia Airlines plane actually is.

The disappearance of the Boeing 777 has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

And as the search drags on, the theories about what actually happened to the jet continue to fly thick and fast.

In an extraordinary departure, Adelaide-based resource survey company GeoResonance said today it may have detected debris from the plane in the Bay of Bengal — 5000km from the current search area.

But the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is co-ordinating the Indian Ocean search, denied the claims and said the team was “satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc”.

“The location of MH370 suggested by the GeoResonance report (in the Bay of Bengal) is not in the Australian search and rescue zone, the JACC said in a statement.

“The Australian-led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft’s location. The location specified by the GeoResonance report is not within the search arc derived from this data.”

The speculation over the plane took another turn yesterday with the Gulf of Thailand theory.

Using the online satellite imagery website TomNod, Hoebel said he was shocked to find the plane resting in what appeared to be an unbroken state.

News_Module: The search continues

All of this is of little consolation to the relatives of the 239 people on board the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. As the search continues, relatives of the Chinese victims aboard the plane have been given information on the serial numbers of the black box on the Boeing 777 aircraft and the voice recording of the communication between the Malaysia Airlines plane and air traffic control, the Straits-Times reports.

During a briefing at the Lido Hotel in Beijing, one of the slides presented to the families revealed that the serial number of the flight data recorder was 08636, while that of the cockpit voice recorder was 2677.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has appointed Mr Kok Soo Chon, former director-general of the civil aviation department, to lead an international investigation team tasked to find the cause of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The team is made up of experts from the US National Transport Safety Board, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch, China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, France’s Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau, the Australia Transport Safety Bureau, aircraft manufacturer Boeing and British satellite communications company Inmarsat.

It also has representatives from Singapore and Indonesia.

“I would like to stress that this investigation is not aimed at apportioning blame or liability,” Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement.

News_Image_File: Search for answers ... Pilot Michael Hoebel says he found this image, which he says could be MH370, after spending hours trawling throughcrowd-sourcing website TomNod.com.

As for the wreckage claims by GeoResonance, Malaysian officials said they are assessing the information.

“We’re not trying to say it definitely is MH370, however we feel it is a lead that should be followed up by the authorities,” GeoResonance director David Pope told Channel 7 News.

The company used imaging, radiation chemistry and other technologies to search the 2 million square kilometres of the ocean floor for chemicals that are found in Boeing 777 jets, and discovered aluminium, titanium, jet fuel residue and other elements in the Bay of Bengal.

GeoResonance compared images taken on March 5 and 10 — before and after the plane’s disappearance — and found differences that could indicate a crash site.

The location is about 190km south of Bangladesh.

The company has been contacted by Malaysian officials, and was asked to give a presentation on its finding, Channel 7 reports.

“We’re a large group of scientists, and we were being ignored, and we thought we had a moral obligation to get our findings to the authorities,” Mr Pope told CNN.

Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said China and Australia were aware of the announcement.

“Malaysia is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information,” a statement from his office said.

News.com.au's Privacy Policy includes important information about our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information (including to provide you with targeted content and advertising based on your online activities). It explains that if you do not provide us with information we have requested from you, we may not be able to provide you with the goods and services you require. It also explains how you can access or seek correction of your personal information, how you can complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with a complaint of that nature.